Modern digital electronics technology has been utilized to design and build a complete flight data acquisition, processing, and analysis system. The design goal was to minimize weight, size, and cost, and produce a system that is relatively simple to install and operate, thus bringing advanced flight test capability to small companies at a reasonable cost.
Proven microprocessor and hybrid chip technology has been combined to produce a high quality, medium capability, self-contained, flight test system. The system includes the analysis hardware and software that makes use of new dynamic flight test maneuvers to extract stability and control coefficients, thrust and drag coefficients, takeoff and landing characteristics, and ground effects. The system allows plots of corrected engineering units data within hours of flight and final analysis of data within several days of a flight program. The paper describes concepts, techniques used, and capabilities of the system.